After Years of Becoming Cleaner, New York City Air Grows Dirtier

By ALLAN R. GOLD

Published: April 18, 1990

After years of improvement, the quality of New York City's air is again on the decline, as growing numbers of automobiles spew rising amounts of carbon monoxide and smog-producing pollutants into the atmosphere.

Twenty years of the Federal Clean Air Act have indeed made New York's vistas clearer and its buildings cleaner. But government officials and environmentalists agree that New Yorkers are still breathing some of the unhealthiest air in America.

The nation's largest city has never met Federal health standards for two of the most dangerous pollutants -ozone, the major component of smog, and carbon monoxide. Now, with the levels of those substances rising again, only Los Angeles has dirtier air, and just a few cities - Chicago, Houston and Denver - are considered as bad.

Cars Are Blamed

''Generally speaking, New York's air is cleaner than Los Angeles's, but that's not saying a whole heck of a lot,'' said Ronald H. White, a senior program manager at the American Lung Association in Washington.

In 1988, for example, one of the worst years for pollution in the decade, New York's peak levels of ozone and carbon monoxide exceeded Federal health limits by more than 50 percent. New York exceeded Federal ozone health standards on 28 days that year, compared with 176 days in Los Angeles.

Most environmental experts say the twin problems of ground-level ozone and carbon monoxide are largely a result of a 25 percent increase in the number of motor vehicles in the region since 1980; cars are the single largest source of those pollutants.

To some extent, the failure to bring New York's air up to the standards of the Clean Air Act of 1970 is a failure of state and local governments to take politically risky actions needed to force compliance. But many environmentalists argue that it is also a failure of Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce Federal rules. Congress is now debating proposals to toughen the Clean Air Act, but even if lawmakers decide to adopt them, compliance will undoubtedly be years away.

''It will get worse before it gets better,'' said Eric Goldstein, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based advocacy group. The country, he said, has reaped the maximum benefit of the 1970 Clean Air Act's requirement that cars reduce tailpipe emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, which contribute to ozone.

The news about air pollution is not all disappointing. In general, New York's air has become much freer of lead, sulfur dioxide and soot. A brownish-yellow haze of ozone-generated smog hangs over the city on some days, as it did 20 years ago, but overall visibility has improved because there is far less soot and grime in the air, environmental officials say; buildings and clothing take longer to get dirty.

Still, New York's air remains unhealthy; breathing elevated levels of ozone and carbon monoxide can lead to a host of health problems. Carbon monoxide can cause headaches and place additional stress on people with heart disease. A colorless, odorless gas, it is a result of incomplete fuel combustion and reaches its highest levels where traffic is heaviest.

Exposure to ozone can produce shortness of breath and, over time, permanent lung damage. Recent research indicates that ozone may be harmful at levels even lower than the current Federal standard. The pollutant is produced by a chemical reaction in the air among hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, heat and sunlight. Ground-level ozone should not be confused with its counterpart in the upper atmosphere, a protective layer that filters ultraviolet radiation.

Debate in Congress

On Capitol Hill, Congress is debating much stricter limits on pollution caused by motor vehicles and businesses, both large and small, as well as requiring the use of cleaner-burning fuels. The Senate has passed a clean air bill, and the House is scheduled to debate its version soon. President Bush has said he favors strengthening the Clean Air Act. Some environmentalists, however, have complained his proposals would not go far enough to reduce pollution.

Should Congress settle on less-restrictive Federal measures, New York City might be forced to reconsider politically sensitive transportation controls, state and Federal officials say.

In the 1970's, the city backed away from adopting tougher pollution-control measures. They would have required, for example, that all truck deliveries be made at night, that cruising by taxis be restricted, that higher bridge tolls be imposed and that the number of cars entering Manhattan be curtailed. Instead, less-stringent measures were introduced: The number of parking spaces were reduced; bus lanes were created on some avenues, and traffic control officers were hired.

Those actions were taken only after environmental groups sued the city to carry out a clean air plan devised years before. Today, both the state and the city are still out of compliance, and they have been ordered by a Federal court to submit an adequate clean air plan no later than September 1991. #760,000 Cars a Day Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, Regional Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said New York would almost certainly require new transportation controls, among other changes, if Congress does not mandate strict controls, like requiring cars to run on cleaner-burning fuels.